Shades of Red
by Nemini
Summary: John always knew that soulmates can imply a person who is going to be the reason of your existence. He was never expecting it to be a young man fifteen years his junior. A standalone tie-in to my other story, Shades of Grey. one-sided Yassen/John, with background mention of John/Hellen


Disclaimer: Alex Rider franchise belongs to Anthony Horrowitz, you know the drill.

Note: This story is completely a fault of my first reviewer, Drifty. If I knew reviews could make you want to write this much, I would have started earlier.

* * *

If there was something that John Rider loved, it was his country. No, that wasn't exactly right. He loved the idea of a safe place for people, for everyone, to live. If it just coincided with him doing the best and everything at all costs for his country, then it was simple like that.

If there was something John Rider hated, it was not having a choice. He liked to approach problems with calm efficiency, evaluating all the paths he could take and then choosing the right one. He considered himself particularly good at choosing the correct direction. He hated being pushed into a corner.

If there was something that John Rider didn't have, it was a soulmate. He loved his wife of five years, Helen, a sweetheart he met at University, a woman who kept him challenged when his work couldn't. If he found something with her, it was understanding. Someone who waited for him at home, a stability point that made him remember his name was John Rider and not someone else, someone who was just his cover for the moment. If she couldn't grant him the pleasure of seeing the world in all spectrums, he didn't care in the slightest.

If there was something that John Rider had, it was morals. At least that's what he liked to tell himself. A self-therapy in a way, a set of rules, limitations that he forsake himself to ever break. To never take another life without reason, to protect children, to know exactly why he was sent to tail someone. _Just because I now kill for a living, doesn't mean I don't do it for the country._ He didn't feel like himself while he was with Scorpia - but that wasn't the point of course. He was there to be someone entirely different.  
He stopped calling himself John Rider. But sometimes even the perfect agents slip.

x

If there was something that Hunter loved, it was the thrill of the hunt. The slow, silent stalk to approach his prey, the adrenaline of the chase, the precision of the elimination. The research he had to make, the way nothing was ever handed to him on a silver platter. The way he was perfect at this, the way he never made a mistake, a miscalculation. He felt like a man on top of the world, someone worthy his name.

If there was something that Hunter had, it was a soulmate. Cossack was young, sometimes reckless, and most of all, entirely obsessed with his only and first role model. So much that it went into the way of their missions, so much that it interfered with who Hunter was. But that is expected from soulmates because they tend to make your life different, they change your whole existence.

If there was something that Hunter was, it was effective and emotionless. And Cossack daily challenged this. The problem with Yassen was, that the not-really-teenager sometimes didn't know where the borders between partners in crime and soulmates were. The young man got absolutely consumed by the idea of having Hunter as his chosen one. Defending him in front of superiors could be considered a lapse of judgment, a childish whim, something to be ignored if it happened once.  
Approaching Hunter just after they reached their safehouse after a successful hit, pushing him against the wall, forcing himself on the older man, trying to kiss him, that was pure madness.  
And John had problems figuring out what Hunter wanted. _It's not cheating if it happens on a mission,_ Helen told him once in the past. But John knew she certainly didn't have in mind nineteen-year-old male assassins in training. He knew there was something between Hunter and Cossack, a spark, a respect, a potential. But there was absolutely nothing between John and Yassen, for these two people have never met. Even perfect agents don't want to sacrifice their whole identity for their cover.

x

The first color John and Cossack and Yassen and Hunter ever saw was the color of blood. It was absolutely fitting trio of these men and only backed John more into the corner of Hunter's mind.

Hunter was meant to follow the recruit, to make sure he was disposed of if he failed. Scorpia had no use for assassins with remorse to killing. It was painstakingly obvious the teenager will hesitate and something in Yassen's follower made John take control over his actions. John seeing the young adult, seeing himself all these years back when he was still serving in the regular army, two people with an entirely different background. He wanted to give him a choice.  
That day in New York, John Rider killed a man for the first time in several months. Maybe it was his own body realizing who Yassen was before he could really see him. The destiny decided there will be no opportunity for choices that day.

All the two needed was one look at each other faces and one at the dead target, with red seeping through the bullet hole in his head.

x

Yassen disappeared one night and returned in a week with the blood of two men on his hands. It would appear so, all the young adult needed to finally fully earn the name Cossack was the right target for him. The night of return he carefully explains to Hunter how he took the lives of Sharkovsky and Ivan, what kind of game of Russian Roulette he played. Hunter praises him for the approach and something inside him feels undeniably attracted to the way the fresh killer played with his prey.

For once, the roles switch and it's not Yassen hanging on every word of Hunter. The young man after all very much proved he is no child anymore, not a piece of naivety and remorse left in that nineteen-year-old body. John spends the next weeks wondering if he made a bad call at Hunter's personality that night, if Yassen isn't consuming John now too.

x

It all comes to an end with a call from a number which he recognized and whose owner he forbid to call him at all costs. Helen hasn't seen him in six months, for he also forbid himself, _Hunter_ , to ever get in contact with her.

She was calling him she is seven months pregnant, a slight panic in her voice. It supposedly couldn't wait to be hidden any longer from him. His whole world was shaken apart, just like when he received information on his current assignment. He was backed into a corner.

When he ended the call, short enough so it could not be tracked, calm mask over his features again, and closed the door behind _their_ room, he was met with hungry and expectant eyes of Yassen, who sat on the _only_ bed in the room. The young man looking like he owned the place, like he owned Hunter.

John supposes he did, in a way. It took Hunter six months to finally consume all of John Rider morals, clouded by his frustration with the situation. John Rider for the first time in his life hated that he had a choice, that he stood at crossroads, where only one man will survive. Tonight the two men blended together. Hunter never liked to own anything to people and especially not to Cossack. John didn't like to leave people behind.

x

The day before the last hunt that Hunter would ever experience, placed in a sunny Malta, a bit of John controlled his hands as he wrote a letter to Yassen, a confession. A mistake on his part probably, a last lapse of judgment, a bit of Hunter's care for Cossack seeping into John.

He tapped the letter to the inside of the first emergency kit and hid it in its place under the bed. He knew Yassen will read it tomorrow, following post-mission protocol, even if he now already knew it would be a failure, that their position was carefully leaked to MI6. He was putting a lot of trust into his protege, playing on a thin edge with this decision to be completely honest for once.

Tomorrow Yassen would learn who John really is and what he feels. It's going to be too late because they will never meet again.

x

John doesn't know that he made a choice which eventually costs his and Helen life.

John doesn't know that his soulmate will be the reason why his son's childhood ends so early fourteen years in the future.

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Note 1: Yes, I know that in canon Yassen knew about John's real employers. I, however, have no idea how he reacted because it's several years since I read Russian Roulette. I also don't really remember how the whole assassination in New York went. I also might have mixed the order of several events in the book, Wikia is a bit confusing about this. Oops? It's an AU, I swear!  
Note 2: What irks me the most, is that in canon John was with Scorpia only for six months. How the hell did he manage to become an instructor, one of their most prominent assassins and Yassen's mentor, I have absolutely no idea.


End file.
